Foals - Inhaler

One of the main and probably the second most influential video personally for me was a video by the Foals called Inhaler. I have taken a lot of ideas from some of the music videos that the Foals have produced but the main reason I have chose this for analysis is because of the structural relevance and relationship it has with our video. 

The video inhaler is actually about smoking and how we abuse our gift of a healthy body. This won Best Track at the 2013 NME Awards and was actually written in the tour van during one of their tours

Lyrics

Sticks n stones 

Don’t break my bones

They’re make believe

  

It’s lock n load 

It’s a dead end road 

for you & me 

 I’m rusted gold 

I’m striped and sold 

I’m make believe 

 I’m up for rent 

my head is spend 

I guarantee

 So can you not go away?

 If just for one day? 

Impossible possible 

how d’you feel now?

 & throw yr fortune away cause 

I can’t get enough space 

space

 space 

 I’m pale n coy 

a momma’s boy 

I’m make believe

 I shimmy shake

 I wake n bake 

I’m over me 

 My lungs defeat

 I cannot breathe 

don’t follow me 

 & you push & shove 

I’ve had enough

 you best believe

 So can you not go away? 

If just for one day?

 The impossible possible 

how d’you feel now? 

How d’you feel in a war? 

War sends out for you throw 

yr fortune away cause 

I can’t get enough space 

space 

space 

Quick overview of the video watching it head to toe it is a both a performance and narrative base video, and the narrative is made up of multiple groups of different people in diverse settings. Individually the shots should not relate and fit into the same video but for some reason through the convergence of a band performance and the drive of the editing the video runs extremely fluently and after watching multiple times I've come to realise how good the music video actually is. 

The music video opens with a group of people sitting in an empty car park, and then lying down and breathing in. This is a visual relation to the name of the song "inhaler" which is then re-visited at the end of the song. 

The video then quickly cuts to the band playing in a graffiti covered skatepark and then proceeds to cut to a number of the other narrative scenes. 

This early introduction the viewers get to the different scenes, helps the video to appear a lot more natural when it cuts to them later on. The shots are extremely short and quick lasting no longer than a second or two, with all mixing all different close ups and camera angles. 

The first narrative properly addressed in the video is a man dancing in a park, and comes into shot after the first line of the song is sung "Sticks and stones, will break my bones". So once the lyrics come into the song the video starts to have a little bit of continuity to it. The shots quickly cut between close up and long shots with no real mid shots during the narrative. Also after every few shots of the narrative it makes a single cut back to the band to reinforce the fact that it is in fact a music video. The performance is placed with times to fit into the narrative. 

The director however does use small subtle influences in the narrative to relate it back to the song of the artist. For example there is a shot of a lady being tattooed with a design of a pair of lungs, relating to inhale. Also amongst the shots of the skate boarders there are a few shots of them smoking a homemade bong also relating to the word "inhaler". Finally there is also a shot of a person putting in a retro music tape with the words "inhale" labelled on it. 

 







The video starts off extremely calm and then as the video and song progresses the visuals becomes a lot more erratic to match the video. The director creates different build ups through out the song. The verses are a lot more peaceful and act as settings for the chorus' where everything goes a little bit manic. He uses effects like slo-motion and soft movement in the camera during the verses but then as the chorus kicks in all the cuts shorten representing more of a montage of clips  and the camera and actors behave a lot more violently. 

In fact in the final third of the music video there are several close ups of characters that are appear to be "straining" and in a lot of pain. Im not quite sure the meaning for this but they are edited in just as the music is at its loudest so match visually to the sound. They wouldn't have worked if they were placed earlier in the video when the music was a lot more mild. 

The video suits its target audience, the indie group, through a number of things. The activities that the people are doing like the skateboarding and BMX bikes are very relatable to that group of people along with more simple things like way the actors are dressed. This is something we are making sure we control heavily that the things the characters are dressed in and what they are doing are realistically relatable to its watchers.

The final scene cuts back to the group of people sitting in the car park that we saw at the start of the video. However if you look closely you can recognise some of the narrative characters involved. They are waving while on the ground in time with each other as if they are "beating". This is meant to symbolise the heart and lungs breathing in and out, relating back to the song and also acting as a way of connecting all the narrative characters together. 

They then start doing a group dance that is slightly on the weird style when it comes to dancing. However some of the hand movements and the way is shot reminds us a little to Michael Jacksons' "Thriller" and Geri Halliwells song "Its Raining Men" which I have also analysed in another post.

Overall this video is very creative and plays on the viewers mind. There is a underlining moral behind the story, even though it is barely noticeable to anyone without the lyrics, to respect your body and health. Personally I think that the director has done very well with combining the different narrative compositions in a video that works together to tell a similar story even though the separate scenes are polar to one another. And this is why I like the video so much.